


You Don't Understand Your Parents Until You Become a Parent Yourself

by CanonicallySoulmates



Category: Supernatural
Genre: John Winchester was flawed, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Sam and Dean Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 23:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15959921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanonicallySoulmates/pseuds/CanonicallySoulmates
Summary: As him and his brother drive home, desperate to get to their son after a hunt gone bad, Sam gains some understanding about his father.





	You Don't Understand Your Parents Until You Become a Parent Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> This was a case of the character taking over and guiding me through what they wanted to say. 
> 
> While John is not "physically" in this fic, he plays a big enough role for me to tag him.

It’s been a long night, and the hunt was a mess, leaving their bodies littered with bruises blooming across their skin and untended to scars that are still oozing, threatening an infection. When they got back to the motel they had been staying in, Sam barely had time to try to get the blood of his hands and convince Dean to at least clean the gash on his forehead, before hastily packing up their things and taking off, leaving the small town behind.

They should stop and get properly cleaned up, try to scrub the scent of ash and death off their bodies, treat their wounds, and try to get some sleep. Make the drive home tomorrow. There’s still time, there’s one last motel 5 miles up ahead, before they get off the main road and the only options are to make the 9-hour drive home or sleep in the Impala.

But there’s no motel with hot enough water to scrub themselves clean, and there’s no sleeping when sobs ring in your ears and a dead body flashes behind closed eyes.

He wonders if they should have brought Jack along, instead of leaving him at home. He wanted to come with them, but they felt it was too dangerous, he’s only recently gotten his powers back and while they have ensured he knows the basics he’s still a novice hunter. Still, Sam can’t help but think that maybe if he had been with them a family wouldn’t be torn apart. Maybe there wouldn’t have been a casualty. Maybe a mother would be planning a birthday party and not a funeral.

Maybe he and Dean wouldn’t have blood on their hands.

Or maybe, it would have been Jack’s.

Maybe him and Dean would be the ones sobbing over the body of their dead child. Maybe they would be the ones building a funeral pyre.

The image flashes in his mind, Jack in a pool of his own blood, mangled like that poor kid was, and Sam itches to grab his phone and call Jack, make sure that he is in fact home and safe. But it’s late, he doesn’t want to risk waking him up and worrying him.

It’s best Jack didn’t come with them, he decides; perhaps it’s selfish, even cruel that there’s a part of Sam that is glad Jack’s back home safe and sound, even if perhaps the price was another’s life. Sam doesn’t regret keeping his child safe and away from the most horror filled parts of the job. Him and Dean have lost too many, given the world too much, they will not sacrifice their son for others.

He wonders if their dad ever felt this way, if he felt the same need, Sam feels now, to know that his kids were ok.

John Winchester was not a very loving father, but Sam has fond memories of occasions when he’d come home and instead of telling them to pack up, or picking up a bottle he’d hold them close. They’d spend the whole day in the motel, or cabin, or apartment, wherever it was they were staying that week, even if it was a school day, their dad never letting them drift too far away from his side. And when night time arrived on those days, he’d either tuck them into bed and spend the night looking at the door gun in hand, or he’d curl up around the both of them as if he could shield them from something.

Maybe those occasions happened after hunts like the one tonight, where the monster might be dead but the hunt was still a failure.

Those moments were one of the few things Sam didn’t rebel against or question as he was growing up, no matter how angry he was or what fight him and his father had before he left, and tonight as him and his brother drive back to their home to do the same thing with their kid, wrap him up in their arms and try to shield him from the world for at least a day, he thinks he understands his dad a little more.

Why he was the way he was, why he thought them how to fight instead of how to throw a ball, why he was more of a drill sergeant than a dad, he understands now, it was his way of protecting them; teach them everything they can so nobody can hurt them, so the world can’t take them from me like it took their mother, Sam gets it, he thinks about Jack and for the first time in his life he understands his dad’s flawed way of thinking, and all it took was becoming a father himself.

For the first time in 10 years Sam wishes his dad were still alive, to talk to him about this, to ask him these questions and more; to ask if he ever forwent sleep and a shower and tending to his wounds because he felt a need to get to whatever place they were calling home that week as fast as he could and check on them, verify with his own eyes that they were safe and unharmed and alive. To ask if he ever thought of finding a phone and calling them in the middle of the night, even if it meant waking them up just to make sure they were breathing; if fear ever tightened like a noose around his heart at the thought that something happened while he was gone.

If he ever looked at a victim and saw them in their place instead.

Trees start replacing lamp posts as they get off the main road and Sam sees Dean’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel; he won’t say it but Sam knows he’s just as desperate to get home, in just a couple more miles Dean will start pressing a little harder on the gas pedal, eating up the miles between them and their son; they might make it to the bunker in time for breakfast, if they’re lucky they’ll get there before Jack wakes up and they’ll be able to clean up first without having to answer too many questions. Then they’ll make pancakes, Jack’s favorite food at the moment, and spend the rest of the day curled up in his and Dean’s bed with Jack between them, safe and unharmed.

And alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this started as a drabble concept about Sam and Dean being desperate to get home to Jack after a hunt involving the death of a child, but it ended up turning into this piece that I'm not a 100% sure how to describe or explain. At least not without going into a full blown ramble. 
> 
> I'm still kinda figuring out where I stand on the character of John Winchester but I think he's too complex to just dismiss him as being an asshole or not being one. He was flawed. He made mistakes. And he had demons he didn't know how to fight. But I think at the end of the day he loved his sons, and he wanted to protect them. He just didn't do it the best way.
> 
> I feel kinda weird about this fic, I don't know, but I hope y'all enjoyed it. 
> 
> (This like my other works are crossposted on my tumblr)


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